Having lived with kundalini for 50 years, it's natural that I compare my pre-kundalini state to its after state. What do I mean by this?
I'm talking about human behavior — what makes us do and believe the things we do. Having lived through a reflexive pre-kundaini state provides a frame of reference; I have a post-state to compare my pre-state thinking and actions to. Not that I have all the answers; I don't. But I do have some questions. For instance, what makes some of us believe that we don't need to care for the environment?
Over the last 20 years, I've started to think that humans may be hardwired to believe the things they do. If that is the case let's try to figure out what hardwired means in relation to human beliefs and actions.
I won't cite the scientific studies; I'll stick to my own observations. Maybe I'm not being scientific enough, but the worldwide weather situation has changed — in some areas for the worse, in others for the better. Leaving aside the question of better or worse, can we agree on this one fact — the weather IS changing?
It seems that the people that disagree with this statement are hardwired to the extent that they reject any and all discussion, study, and/or statistics on the matter because someone in authority who they respect told them to. They are authoritarian-minded with a tendency to comply. That doesn't mean they are stupid; they're not. However, their intelligence confines them to accepting facts within a certain field, but not beyond it. For instance, they may be highly educated electrical engineers, administrators, or doctors, but when approaching a subject like the weather, outside their specific field, they bow to an outside authority that may be less than qualified to comment on the subject.
The people that agree with this statement are hardwired to the extent that they are open to any postulate and are ready to study and debate it. They are free-minded with a tendency to disagree with one another on the finer points and thereby splinter into factions. That, too, doesn't mean they are stupid; they're not. It does mean it is difficult for them to agree with like-minded colleagues because they always want to go their own way, improving and embellishing. For them, authority is always to be questioned.
In debate and propaganda the authority-minded have an advantage: they are of one mind in following their leaders in lockstep. The free-minded, on the other hand, are constantly bickering. Because they speak with many voices, it takes them longer to formulate their positions.
What does this mean for American democracy? It means that extreme elements in both tendencies are growing more and more rigid in their stances and their beliefs. Hard wired brains are resistant to compromise.
Other signs of irreparable deadlock are:
Why is it important for those seeking illumination through energy cultivation practices like kundalini meditation? When kundalini awakens in a host body, the person wants to believe that he/she is on the road to illumination. Does this mean that kundalini will somehow magically lead the individual away from these tendencies, towards a state that is above the fray?
I'm not sure that an active kundalini guarantees the individual is on the road to illumination. Quite the contrary, there is lots of work to be done on the body and on the ego. What's more, illumination is not the brass ring on the merry-go-round: I personally know of examples of both tendencies who have an active kundalini.
I'd like to believe that kundalini induces a higher consciousness that awakens inactive areas of the brain, for example, the centers that govern dialog and compromise.
That's what the founders set out to do with their interwoven system of checks and balances, believing these mechanisms would always be able to offset the twin excesses of authoritarianism and babelism. In effect, the founders either believed we could evolve and checks and balances would provide a little nudge or we couldn't evolve and checks and balances would save us from ourselves. I'm just not sure that we have evolved. Why?
The politics of today are the politics of Marius and Sulla that I read about in 10th grade Roman history class.
How little those centers of the human brain that govern politics and social betterment have progressed in 2,000 years! Could it be that these centers of the brain are hardwired, if not at birth, then over time?
I'm talking about human behavior — what makes us do and believe the things we do. Having lived through a reflexive pre-kundaini state provides a frame of reference; I have a post-state to compare my pre-state thinking and actions to. Not that I have all the answers; I don't. But I do have some questions. For instance, what makes some of us believe that we don't need to care for the environment?
Over the last 20 years, I've started to think that humans may be hardwired to believe the things they do. If that is the case let's try to figure out what hardwired means in relation to human beliefs and actions.
I won't cite the scientific studies; I'll stick to my own observations. Maybe I'm not being scientific enough, but the worldwide weather situation has changed — in some areas for the worse, in others for the better. Leaving aside the question of better or worse, can we agree on this one fact — the weather IS changing?
It seems that the people that disagree with this statement are hardwired to the extent that they reject any and all discussion, study, and/or statistics on the matter because someone in authority who they respect told them to. They are authoritarian-minded with a tendency to comply. That doesn't mean they are stupid; they're not. However, their intelligence confines them to accepting facts within a certain field, but not beyond it. For instance, they may be highly educated electrical engineers, administrators, or doctors, but when approaching a subject like the weather, outside their specific field, they bow to an outside authority that may be less than qualified to comment on the subject.
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| Conservative: Authoritarian-Mined Nazism Destroyed Germany |
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| Liberal: The Free-Minded French Revolution Devolved into Dictatorship |
In debate and propaganda the authority-minded have an advantage: they are of one mind in following their leaders in lockstep. The free-minded, on the other hand, are constantly bickering. Because they speak with many voices, it takes them longer to formulate their positions.
What does this mean for American democracy? It means that extreme elements in both tendencies are growing more and more rigid in their stances and their beliefs. Hard wired brains are resistant to compromise.
Other signs of irreparable deadlock are:
- Rarely do members of one group change tendencies.
- Name calling and personal attacks are the rule, not the exception.
- Nothing gets done.
Why is it important for those seeking illumination through energy cultivation practices like kundalini meditation? When kundalini awakens in a host body, the person wants to believe that he/she is on the road to illumination. Does this mean that kundalini will somehow magically lead the individual away from these tendencies, towards a state that is above the fray?
"One danger for those who’ve experienced awakenings of some kind is the immediate co-opting of the experience by the ego–the awakening becomes another story that bolsters the ego identification. The shift in consciousness fades and one moves back into identification with thoughts. That was my immediate experience after the psychosis. I was my thoughts again and the awakening was relegated to an experience that I’d ‘had.’"
~ The Hidden Dangers of Early Enlightenment - Kara-Leah GrantI'm suspicious of premature claims to enlightenment. For me kundalini first addresses physical irregularities and only after these are taken care of does it start to open up metaphysical vistas.
I'm not sure that an active kundalini guarantees the individual is on the road to illumination. Quite the contrary, there is lots of work to be done on the body and on the ego. What's more, illumination is not the brass ring on the merry-go-round: I personally know of examples of both tendencies who have an active kundalini.
"The first, and also in my opinion the most ominous, of the fundamental problems now threatening American democracy is our accelerating deterioration of political compromise. As I previously explained, political compromise is one of the basic advantages of democracies as compared to dictatorships, because it reduces or prevents both tyranny by a majority and its converse of paralysis by a frustrated minority. The U.S. Constitution sought to create pressure for compromise by devising systems of checks and balances. For instance, our president leads government policy, but Congress controls the government’s budget, and the Speaker of the House (Congress’s lower chamber) sets the House’s agenda for acting on presidential proposals. If, as regularly happens, our representatives in Congress disagree among themselves, and if backers of one view cannot muster sufficient votes to impose their will, a compromise must be reached before the government can do anything.
"But political compromise in the U.S. has been deteriorating from the mid-1990’ s onwards, and especially from around 2005. Compromise has been breaking down not only between our two major political parties, but also between the less moderate and more moderate wings of each party. That’s especially true within the Republican Party, whose more extreme Tea Party wing has mounted primary election challenges against moderate Republican candidates for re-election who had compromised with Democrats. As a result, the 2014–2016 Congress passed the fewest laws of any Congress in recent American history, was behind schedule in adopting budgets, and risked or actually precipitated government shutdown."
~ Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis - Jared Diamond
I'd like to believe that kundalini induces a higher consciousness that awakens inactive areas of the brain, for example, the centers that govern dialog and compromise.
That's what the founders set out to do with their interwoven system of checks and balances, believing these mechanisms would always be able to offset the twin excesses of authoritarianism and babelism. In effect, the founders either believed we could evolve and checks and balances would provide a little nudge or we couldn't evolve and checks and balances would save us from ourselves. I'm just not sure that we have evolved. Why?
The politics of today are the politics of Marius and Sulla that I read about in 10th grade Roman history class.
How little those centers of the human brain that govern politics and social betterment have progressed in 2,000 years! Could it be that these centers of the brain are hardwired, if not at birth, then over time?
